How Students Got A Liberal Education In The Parietal Age

December 08, 1985|By Bob Hughes.

According to a booklet, ``Read and Be Right . . .`` handed to every undergraduate woman at Northwestern University in 1954, ``coeds`` had to observe a strict curfew or suffer a ``date jerk`` for every 15 ``late minutes.``

The regular curfew for female freshmen on weeknights was 10 p.m. A date jerk (renamed a ``campus`` in the `60s) meant a 10 p.m. curfew on a Friday or Saturday night, too, traditional dating nights when other girls could stay out till 2 a.m.

A complicated system required girls to ``sign out`` when they left their living units and ``sign in`` upon their return.

``The sign-out chart or book is for your protection,`` the 1954 booklet says. ``If you plan to be away from the house . . . after 7 p.m. if a freshman, and 7:30 if an upper-classwoman, you are required to sign out as you leave the building. A penalty of 5 late minutes is given for insufficient or incorrect sign-out or for failure to sign in. A penalty of 10 late minutes is given for failure to sign out. A girl may not sign in until her date has left the house . . . .``

Today`s students can`t quite believe such curbs on behavior ever existed. Yesterday`s students can`t quite believe that they`ve vanished and that college men and women may now live next door to one another in approved housing at most large universities--or with one another if they`re so inclined.

The old restrictions were sometimes ineffective, of course. Some women, noting that there were no similar rules for men, were willing to accept the consequences if they chose to stay out late. Occasionally a woman might try to sign in for her roommate. (Bedchecks were conducted to prevent this practice, but a few pillows strategically positioned under the covers could thwart the bedchecks.)

``The windows in our women`s dormitories were actually nailed shut so we couldn`t slip out and meet a man,`` one young woman recalls. ``Men, on the other hand, could come and go all night in their residence halls, and actually open a window to get a breath of air in the spring.``

Elaborate rituals grew up around the regulations. Outside residence halls as the curfew approached an observer might see dozens of couples enjoying a good-night kiss, interrupted by frequent glances at a wristwatch. Then, moments before the forbidden hour, the women would rush en masse for the entrance. Among the affluent a gift from a man of one rose per late minute was considered proper compensation for the woman whose reputation had been besmirched. In fact, the traditional panty raid depended for its existence on strict sexual segregation and curfews.

Northwestern was not much different in its treatment of women students than other major universities, according to Virginia Landwehr, the present dean of students at NU.

Usually it is parents who want university officials to stand guard over their children away at school. The concept of in loco parentis (in place of the parent) guided the policies of many universities for years.

Today, to accommodate students` demands for their ``constitutional rights`` and still allay the fears of parents, most large schools offer an array of living arrangements. All-girl residences are available for those girls who want them--or whose parents want them. Such living accommodations are sometimes referred to as ``virgin vaults`` by campus men. Other forms of housing include halls with male and female wings, halls where men and women are housed on separate floors, halls where men and women are assigned rooms with private baths at random and halls with ``coeducational bathrooms.``

In 1978 the U.S. Justice Department actually sued Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, to force the Mormon school to change an off-campus housing policy aimed at keeping male and female students apart. The private university forbade single men and women from sharing apartments or living next door to one another in housing complexes. The Justice Department contended that this policy violated the Fair Housing Act of 1968. A compromise was worked out permitting Brigham Young to maintain its standards.